Who is She Walks Like Bear?

After 17 years service in the United States Army, I traded in my combat boots for a pair of Crocs. I bounced around the medical field for years working as a dental assistant, dental office manager and later, a licensed massage therapist who focused on trauma and injury management under the guidance of a well-known chiropractor in the Pacific Northwest.

Currently, I am a nationally registered and state certified Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), a healer with more than 20 years of experience in the field of Somatics, shamanic practitioner, a life coach and behavioral health technician (BHT) employed at a therapeutic boarding school for at-risk teenaged girls in northern Arizona.

I am the wife of a Marine Corps veteran, a mother to two wonderful young men, an Army veteran, a healer, a lover of the Great Outdoors, and practicing Native American herbalist who wildcrafts the plants, roots and other materials I use in my remedies.

So how did I end up with the moniker or name “She Walks Like Bear?”

During the summer of 2022, I fell off the back deck of the largest rig in the fleet of the ambulance company I worked for at the time. I injured my left shoulder, hip and leg...badly enough the injuries ended my career as an ambulance crew EMT a short time later.

Fast forward two years, and I found myself attending ceremony with many elders sitting in a circle around a small fire on level ground. Approaching and moving around this circle, not to mention sitting down on the ground was difficult for me. Even after all that time, I still had a bit of a limp in my left leg.

As I approached the gathering, one of the elders seated near the open side of the circle began to chuckle, elbowing the person sitting immediately to her right and said, “Oh look — here comes She Walks Like Bear.” After greeting and sitting next to this elder, I asked why she called me that. It was explained to me that a bear, even over level ground, moves with a “hitchy” gait as they walk, as though they were nursing an injury. Bears tend to move slowly and deliberately unless provoked or it is absolutely necessary. This elder knew about the left hip injury I was healing from, and stated that my walking stride mimicked that gait…and since that time, the name stuck —

“She Walks Like Bear.”